Don’t Tell Me I Can’t – Episode 536        

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today, we’re gonna be speaking about a hero, someone that is more than likely larger than life. You’re gonna read this book and say, no way this is possible. I shared this book with you last week, Kim. You, we’re not gonna say touched on it. You didn’t just glance at it. You consumed it as though it was your last meal. Why? Yes, this is the most incredible book. So this is called, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t. And it is by a kid named Cole Summers. And it was my last meal. I was so honored to be able to read this. And I’m so grateful for Kindle. Like Spencer suggested the book. I had it on my Kindle. I think I had probably read it

[00:52] by the time I went to bed that night. I mean, first of all, I do read very, very quickly and I’m grateful for that skill. Nevertheless, it’s the message that was so amazing. The message of possibility, the message of the results of hard work, the message of I can do it. And what he picked up on, this is a 14 year old kid from Charlie Munger, who is Warren Buffett’s age old partner, is get back up, get back up, get back up. And I could probably repeat that about 10 more times. And a variety of other amazing things that he’s learned all from YouTube. He considers himself unschooled, homeschooled first, but then unschooled. This is a kid that owns a tractor at age nine, bought a house at age 10.

[01:48] It was a series of birthday presents, literally that he did for himself. I don’t remember what 11 was. I think it was a farm. He owns a 350 acre farm. And the learnings that he has gained because his parents let him fail are unbelievable. Now, Spencer, I’ll let you share what we should as a not spoiler alert, but so that people are not shocked. And what did you learn about this person before you even referred him to me? Yeah, so I think taking into context of how I found the information is really valuable. So this, and then typically that’s how it works. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna state it this way. I found out about this through a podcast interview. It’s a podcast called My First Million. It’s one of my favorite podcasts.

[02:44] On that episode, they had one of their friends on, I can’t remember his name. He’s an immigrant that had started a tech business. He had sold it after working at it for several years. And then he doesn’t like to use the word retired, but he no longer had to work. One, I like that he doesn’t use the word retired. He’s like, I don’t like that. He goes, I now get to work on interesting projects. And a lot of the projects I’m working on, I don’t need to get paid. I just get to be curious. So down his path of curiosity, he found this book and just in passing, he mentioned it. So here’s the alert that came to me is I thought, well, this guy is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever heard. Just, you know, as Naval Ravi Khan,

[03:33] I think he’s one of the most wise people out there. When an interesting or wise person speaks, I listen. I don’t question, I listen. And I said, okay, bye, bought the book. And I think the same goes for you as well. When we’re listening to the podcast, if you say something, even if it’s in passing, it should be one of those things of, okay, I’ll buy that book that’s suggested and then I’ll consume what’s in there. That’s how I found out about it. And so I can’t attribute any of the wisdom of that to me, but that’s where it started. We’ll go from there. But have you seen the same happen as well by, I know you often speak of Dan Sullivan or Peter Diamantis or it could be friends that you have.

[04:19] And I would say you’ve learned to shorten the decision or the action of saying immediate action, no decision needed, just yes. Well, it’s so important because we all have massive to-do lists. And so as we’re consuming information, which there is literally an endless amount of information out there, none of us need more information. We need to be selective about the information that we’re consuming. And having that distinction and that clarity is so important. And I would really encourage you to avoid the I’ll do it later space. Now there’s some things, of course, that are very appropriate for I’ll do it later because they take a lot of time or what have you. And that’s fine. But there’s also the challenge of what I think

[05:06] is often called the parking lot of ideas that are just out there that we think, yeah, we wanna do that with. And so for you as a listener, I’m going to encourage you to adopt a couple skills that I think Spencer and I both operate with, which is when we are done with the day, the week, sometimes I’ll even just do it literally morning and afternoon, depending on what’s going on in my day, I’ll make some really quick decisions about yes and no, yes and no, yes and no. And that then shrinks my to-do list to only the things that are important to me. And then furthermore, it’s uber important that you be crystal clear about what you’re putting in your brain. And I grew up with teachers. My parents were, my mom was a kindergarten teacher.

[05:59] My dad was initially an elementary school teacher and then a principal. Our family thrived on a school schedule that I still operate on today. And that is that Friday and Saturday nights, and sometimes even Sunday nights in my younger years, Sunday nights were for the next week. But now that I have a little bit more established business, et cetera, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are for fun, they’re for entertainment, they’re for doing family things. For me and Todd, that often includes watching a movie. I’m still very selective about the movies that I watch. Nevertheless, they’re for entertainment. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights are for continued education. And of course we make exceptions with that,

[06:48] but the important thing is that there are additional times that are not during the workday that I am doing things that enlighten my brain, that support my body, like I might go on an extra long walk at night, that contribute to my spiritual growth or my inspirational growth, if that’s a better word for you. Meaning like I might watch a Bible study thing. I’m going through the Women of the Bible right now with a class by Madeline Moppen at Bible Guides or something like that. So whatever it is, I’m being conscious of the stuff that goes in my brain. Now, I allow a very short time for social media, usually about 15 minutes, and that’s it. And that’s what serves me. And thankfully I have a team that helps

[07:42] with the promotion of social media. So I’m not having to spend a lot of time on it in that regard, in which case if I was, those hours would need to be longer or minutes. But I went on a really different bunny rabbit trail there, Spencer, in answering your question, but I hope it was helpful. It’s very helpful. You know, there’s one point in that thread that’s connected yet not often talked about that I think really important. You’re talking about the focus that we have, the ability to make decisions and to say no. Nos are often way more important than yeses. Like, you know, we have to be so good at just no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But there’s one piece in there that I can see happen to my kids and myself

[08:29] that I want to warn against and it ties back to this book, which is this. As a human, we can get almost as good, call it like a percentage scale, you know, zero to 100%. We can get almost like a 90% dopamine hit of us talking about our goals than doing it. And so- Interesting. Now that’s some fun brain science you’ve picked up on. Absolutely. So what that means is this. Many times we can consume information, be it a book, a movie, a conference, whatever you want to call it. And then we can start to talk about our goals. And then people will say, oh, that’s so cool. That’s great. Oh, wow, how brave. That’s so wonderful. When we haven’t done the work, we get the dopamine hit and it almost puts up another gate there.

[09:28] There is an exception to that. So for example, I’m going to use your sister, Tammy Brandon, with the blueprint process. That’s her saying, hey, this is the way that I navigate my life. These are the principles that I work by and this is the main purpose. And there’s been work in it and continuous work. Okay, to let others know. So let’s go back to the book. The book here is a 14 year old boy. And we’re going to start with a simple story of the neighbor’s garden. Five years old says, hey, I want to work on your garden. Neighbor says, you’re too young. And he’s like, what? I’m closer to the ground and I can pick up weeds. These are really light. So what does he do? He starts his own garden there.

[10:11] Like that sets the stage. I love it. Well, and that story just plays out in his life throughout so many different other examples of people telling them you can’t do that because you’re a kid, including the buying of the home, farm, tractor, et cetera, et cetera. So it is a awesome mindset to adopt. Dan Sullivan has his strategy circle that I’ve used for years. And I don’t always write it out in a proper strategy circle format, but it’s basically identifying the obstacles that oppose the goals and using those obstacles as fuel either mentally or emotionally or literally to get the job done. And this young boy figures out how to help feed his family with the raising of turkeys and rabbits. He figures out aspects of mechanics

[11:11] like tire replacing, engine repair, that kind of thing. And what I love about it is he’s clearly the type of individual that has skills with his hands that can have also the brain that goes with the mechanics, the actual mechanics of things like engine repair and building and that type of physical labor that requires the mechanical brain or the engineering brain or whatever the terminology is there to connect the two. And it’s such a blessing because his parents let that feed on itself. Now, some other child may have some amazing capacity around, well, Spencer, look at yours, taking a drone, getting it in the air, figuring out the marketing angle and what he could actually do with the drone

[12:00] and that kind of thing. And you all really gave him the time, the space, the opportunities to feed that. That’s what each of us need as adults as well is to take the time and the space and the opportunities that we have, apply our God-given talents to them and get good results. And then do that over and over again. And this is what we are put on earth to do. And this capability does not start at any age other than zero, nor does it end at any age other than death. Absolutely. So don’t tell me I can’t. You’re exactly right. That starts from birth to death. Another component that’s critical to this is that he grew up with parents that were disabled in the poorest of poor situations that we have in America.

[13:03] And he made something happen. It was totally on his own. It can be challenging for any of us. I know for myself, when I’m reading it, I go, where was I at 14? Where was I at 10? What was I doing? You can’t do that. Like that’s not gonna be helpful, but we can look at it and say, he was smart enough to create the environment. Also, we have this podcast. This is a message of prosperity. This podcast is doing the same. The books that you write, Kim, those are doing the same. There may be some other coal out there that’s listening to this show that all of a sudden is going to pop up. And at some point they may say, well, there’s this Kim Butler that I read her stuff and it made sense. It was really helpful.

[13:52] And I listened to her podcast when I was doing work. That’s what it may be. And it may not. You might not get that until a hundred years from now. We don’t know. Well, the internet is a joy. It can be a force for good. It can also be incredibly disastrous. But how awesome that you picked up on this thread and that we’ve been able to continue it. And it’s touching all parts of the country. In fact, literally all parts of the world, some because you’re literally recording from somewhere in the world today. And furthermore, because there are amazing ideas and something like 5 million minds that are coming online in the next few years as the literal entire population of the world gets on the internet.

[14:43] So use it as a force for good. Figure out the learnings. Say no to that which does not serve you. Say yes to that which stretches you, causes growth and enables you to keep contributing. Thank you, Kim. Very well said. What we’ll do is we’ll put a link to this book inside the description. Don’t Tell Me I Can’t, autobiography by a wonderful 14 year old author. This actually, we may even do additional episodes around this, it’s that good. There is a sad note to this story. And also on top of the sad note, I think maybe it’s designed this way because it does provide that much inspiration. You wanna share the sad note around the story? Yes, Cole first of all is a pen name and second of all has passed on.

[15:39] He died in a kayaking accident unrelated to all of the good that he has done in this world. And so that’s just a wake up call for all of us. Absolutely. Listeners, we are very grateful for each and one of you. And here’s the reason why, because we all have the same amount of time every single day. And by us looking at the stats of this podcast, we can see it reaches so many people throughout the world. It means you’re taking your precious time and spending it with us. It means you’re prosperity minded that you’re living by principles and you’re trying to make your present and your future better, which I think actually can affect your past too, which is pretty neat. And you’ve chosen to invest that time with us.

[16:30] So eternally grateful for that. There is nothing you can’t do. Go and do it. Kim, thank you so much. Thank you, Spencer. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.